Yes, I do perform fact checking. Not on everything, but items that seem too good/bad to be true. So, I was listening to one of the Lake Land protesters during the walkout the other day. She made the claim that the number one cause of death for kids was gun violence. Now, I do not agree with everything that they are trying to accomplish with this push. I do support a couple of items such as; less kids being killed, and their involvement in the process. (More on this later) Do I want kids to be getting killed? No.

So I pulled up the numbers and the little lass was wrong, the claim was false for every age group. The most recent chart is below for your review. For the moment, let me focus on the age group of the speaker, 14-24. Homicide, Firearm is 2nd after motor vehicle accidents. Have you heard anyone push for vehicular safely? Even with vehicles being a third more deadly… When you combine the numbers from all of the age groups, where do you think homicide, firearm falls in? 5th place.

So let’s consider how business and life works. You seek out the fastest, cheapest, and effective method to bring the best results, right? If we were really looking to reduce juvenile deaths, we would take our eyes to the bigger numbers right? Well, drivers are not to be vilified, there are too many of them. God forbid we overburden the police by having them actually enforce the traffic laws. We would need to pay for more of them so that they could perform the job. Don’t get me wrong, I like to police. I just think that they have been refocused away from the community policing that we need to build the social structure that is conducive to respect for oneself and others. A great example of that was the pilot program in Vancouver WA that put cameras on school buses to catch drivers putting out kids in harms way while getting on or off the bus. Why was it called off? it generated too many citations. Wait, what?!? Initially it would be a revenue generator, then as respect (or fear) built up, the drivers would pay more attention and the tickets would taper off with safer drivers. I know at least one local girl died in this manner, more than died in the county by school shootings in the last ten years.

There are 37000+ high schools in the US. How many have had a real shooting? No, I personally do not count the bullshit numbers being padded in such as a window getting shot by a punk with a BB gun. However for expedience, I will count the data in an unfiltered manner from 01/01/00 to 03/14/18.

There were 268 deaths and 386 injuries. Too many I know, but if you listen to the media and rhetoric then you would think that the number was in four or five digits.

Since the various levels of government have already permitted plenty of infringements to the second amendment, what will a very small amount more hurt right? It isn’t like I am going to pay attention to them. So let’s look at what may have some impact.

Good background checks, that are not as moronic as the no-fly list. There has to be due process to individuals being named. We have enough people listed on the no-fly because their name sounds foreign.

Illegal immigrants in possession of a firearm, immediate deportation after due process.

I am quite curious why suicide (in any manner) is listed as an “Unintentional Injury Death”. By the very definition of suicide, it is intentional and should not be included on this table. Another oddity in the results was that from 25-64 the leading cause was unintentional poisoning. No ideas there yet, but I found it notable.

As so many are flocking to cell phones and the ages of the users are getting younger, there is a topic that parents need to be aware of.

Sextortion is a form of sexual exploitation that employs non-physical forms of coercion to extort sexual favors from the victim. Sextortion refers to the broad category of sexual exploitation in which abuse of power is the means of coercion, as well as to the category of sexual exploitation in which threatened release of sexual images or information is the means of coercion.[1]

We as a society need to be able to band together to combat this psychological attack against our youth. 83% of the victims are female, and 46% are minors. Like physical sexual assault, it is estimated that only a third or less of the victims report the crime. 60% of the perpetrators knew the victim before the incident.

I have reviewed the evidence of one of these cases personally. No, I will not share that data as the victim does not deserve that. The portrayal below is based on that incident but is sanitized for her privacy. This was properly reported to the appropriate authorities.

Here is how this abuse occurred:

Victim received a text from an unknown source

criminal claimed that they had nude photos of the victim

They also recited her street address, including which room within her apartment was hers

the pictures were going to be shared on all forms of social media unless she complied with the criminal

the criminal wanted her to disrobe for more pictures

on a the second day the criminal resumed texting with a more aggressive tone

the same intent of getting more pictures

Criminal escalated to calling the victim and pressuring her to an online video chat service in Scandinavia (I believe in Norway) to excuse herself from family to go to a bathroom to disrobe and put herself on display.

As I and my colleagues tried to trace the evidence and find the personal data exposure, we were impressed with the victim’s awareness of protecting her data. She does not have her college address shared with any databases other than Amazon, and even they did not have which room was hers.

Text messages are very hard to trace unless you are law enforcement. Even for them, they are not easy. Because of my role, I was able to provide the FBI with the owner (not the user) of the phone numbers used to text and call the victim. I was also able to alert the abuse team at the video chat service so that they could review the actions of their users. Since I did not have a subpoena, I was unable to get data to relay to the FBI.

When the victim returned to campus, she found that her roommates were also victims. Since the issue was clearly involving a local perp, the apartment management was advised. They had a very lame excuse that this was a data breach when someone restarted the internet. I am still stunned with how stupid this answer is. The apartment management company did say that seven women had come forward. This number ended up rising to twenty when published by a local media source. The article was a plea for other victims to come forward. It is my personal opinion that the apartment complex has a rogue employee that needs to be identified, arrested, and prosecuted. So far this particular incident is limited to the complex.

When I asked if the abuse has continued, the victim stated that there has not been a peep since the police report was filed. The situation is getting great exposure on campus so the student body is much more aware.

If you check the links below, you will find that this situation is not isolated, but becoming more and more common.

Parents need the same level of awareness. This is the tool that you need to arm your kids (regardless of how grown that they are) so that they can fend off these pond scum samples.

Obviously the first line is to make sure that they do not have these kinds of pictures TO BE shared in the first place. I also know that this is wishful thinking, just like abstaining from sex before committed relationships. It is talking to them so that they know if they do not have content for the criminals to share, then why co-operate with their demands. Do not delete the texts, call logs or any other evidence. The local police (and likely the FBI) need to be contacted. Take the time to file the report. The perp needs to be caught. This is nothing to be ashamed of. Even if your kids DID have content that could be exposed, this is not the time to blame the victim. They did nothing to deserve this. My thought is to treat that situation as you would when your kid calls form a party/bar after drinking. Get them to safety then discuss when it is more mentally safe to do so. If your kids know without a doubt that you will stand with them, then they will be more likely to tell you of the incident so you can help them through it.

I hope that nobody that you know has to go through this, but the numbers indicate that it will hit close to home.

We have been seeing far too many incidents where what starts as a peaceful protest, or vigil turn into horrible riots.

I do not know why the mainstream media cannot devlop a damn spine and call the event what it is when it turns. Do they feel that they will be protested, boycotted, or what? If the media outlets had the balls to return to being NEWS agencies again and not ratings fluffballs we may actually listen to and respect them.

Have we gotten to the point where so many people buy into the bullshit of “white privilege”? Has society decided that any given non-white group can riot with immunity?

Even when the outrage is justified, the destruction of your local towns is not. Have pride in yourselves enough to hold peaceful protests. Once that our great leaders would be proud of.

One of my friends had a post on Facebook that I found quite interesting. This is a guest author piece by Chris Larsen.

Is it really this hard to understand that the reason most law-abiding citizens want a firearm that can hold 30 rounds is because it’s their right…..and why is it their right? Because our founding fathers knew that governments can get too big for their britches and, should something happen that requires the people within its borders to protect themselves….from without or within…they wanted to ensure we would have a way to do so. A rifle or firearm with only a few rounds would never hold up against military owned automatics. Do people not get that defending yourself against your own government could be a very real possibility no matter what year it is?
I don’t offer a plan to “fix” anything, I’m not going to get into a debate about why guns shouldn’t be taken away…hell, I don’t even own a gun, but there are very real reasons that people want them and the number of rounds they can hold, and it’s not to hunt and it’s not for play.
If you think the government can protect us, do no wrong or otherwise has our best interests at heart, explain how a criminal with well over 35 scandals associated with her has had evidence of many wrongdoings and is still running for the highest office in our nation? Or maybe you can explain why the presumptive Republican nominee is worried about being ousted by the leaders of his political party after their people voted for him? No? It means that the government DOES NOT have OUR interests at heart. No I’m not a Trump or Bernie supporter, I’m not left, I’m not right, I’m logical, pragmatic and use common sense.
Yes guns can be dangerous, yes they can be portable devices filled with death and violence in the wrong hands, but there are so many real positive uses to them as well and it’s not like our gun dealers will have clairvoyance and know when someone has violence in their heart. Just take them away then? No…see above.
Hell, guns have made it so everyone can sit here and argue about whether they’re worthwhile or not today….without them, where would we be? Answer: We wouldn’t. Why? Because we wouldn’t have been able to overthrow the tyrannical government that was making it so hard for our forefathers to live and thrive.

1%, 99%, whatever the percentage, we are all humans, citizens, consumers, or workers…

I grew up hearing that the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer”.

I never expected the gap to grow as it has.

The principle of capitalism is pretty simple. Determine a product or service and sell it for a profit while reducing risk and cost as much as possible.

Where it goes form there, it isn’t anywhere near as simple. We had a society of nuclear families. For those not familiar with the term, it WAS mother, father, and two kids. Our family definition has shifted as we have grown more accepting of the differences in people’s preferences. Families could have a parent at home with the kids and still enjoy their lives. I had a history teach in high school assert that it was gay couples that pushed that model to break. I find the theory to be bunk, but worthy of mention only as what people believe(d).

Business has also seen shifts. Those products or services are no longer just being sold for a profit. In Business Management 101 I was taught to “seek the point of market resistance” when determining price points. This is one of the dangers of capitalism. You price for whatever the people are willing to pay, regardless of your cost. How much is a Tylenol, band-aid, or nicotine patch in a hospital? I saw some big numbers on my last bill.

When the capitalist moguls get enough money, they start supporting politicians more and more to gain favors in legislation. Those favors bolster business to the point that we the people get lost. We are no longer as important. We just work for them, and buy their goods. This is where the poor, start getting poorer. Now families have to have two wage earners to make things work. How much of that is because we as a people feel that items formerly considered luxuries to be needs. cell phones, internet, cable/satellite tv, game systems, and the list goes on, to be needs. Are they really needs? How much of our monthly bills are needless expenditures.

Now, our system does seem to permit a person with enough drive and a new idea to break into that system and “make something of themselves”. This bring new money into the 1% to make up for those that pass away, do something stupid and end up in prison, or something.

Capitalism is good in it’s core. I have to take issue with capitalism when it is left unchecked. The 1% needs to learn, that they do not need to scalp us of all that they are able to. They need to rein in their greed as a matter of social responsibility. They plead that taxes stifle business. That may be the case, but as long as the common people are not able to make ends meet, the government will be compelled to spend more and more on social programs. Those programs take revenue.

Our society has decided that socialism is evil, as evil as communism. (our hypocrisy is telling that we are the land of the free unless we believe in socialism or communism.) They sure are happy about freeways, snowplows, power grid, water supplies etc provide for them. Does our system need to be purely socialist? No, I do not think so. I think those at the top saying that we should eat cake, need to find their limits voluntarily, before ugly stuff happens forcing them to have monopolies to be broken etc.

There is a concept that I heard all of my life in relation to people in of after prison. The phase “paying their debt to society” or “paid their debt to society” are bantered about. To this is a crock, that debt is much like poorly managed credit card debt. You keep paying and paying, but some never become debt free. Sure, in the case of misdemeanors where you sit in county lockup, the debt is easy. Once you are released, you go get a new job and resume life.

When you are convicted of a felony, it is not so simple. You serve your time and get out. is the debt paid? nope, you are further penalized by having a hard time getting a work or a place to live. The person has been branded so they continue to pay. For some crimes (yes, more serious to a society) they have to announce where they live and perhaps work.

As a cyber security professional I may view things a little differently.

So we have a site (others as well) that caters to cheating. Is it a shock? It shouldn’t be, there are sites for pretty much everything.

As you probably already have gathered via that media saturation as the world things that this is FAR more important than any other world issue a site that is devoted to aiding people in cheating on those that they love. That site was broken into OR had an insider blow the whistle on the whole shebang. At this point there are some clues that lead us to believe that the breach revealed far too much to be the result of a break in. That the data is too complete.

so we have:

a breech of security

The breach may have been an inside job, so that is an interesting series of bit in my feeds. (@Pissed0ffPirate (that is a zero) if you want to follow me on Twitter)

release of confidential material

We get to see a list of people who are not so smart. This list has people who never thought of the worst, are naive, or just plain dumb. We are seeing claims of those who claim that they were set up. I suppose that it is possible that they could have been, only the individual would know the truth.

suicides

As of today, I am aware of three suicides being attributed to the release of the data. Is this worth ending one’s life? (I think I have a suicide post around here somewhere) Why not either fix your relationship or move on and try for a new one?

lawsuits

We are seeing legal actions already starting. I don’t know how many of these will remain individual actions or if they will be forced into one or a few class action lawsuits.

sextortion

For those that made the decision to wander this path, and someone tries to extort or blackmail you… just fess up. Your spouse/significant other is going to find out. No doubt about it. Just step up and work through it. (you may have to end it, but at least you don’t have the stress or financial losses)

further relationship issues

At some point down the road, there will be studies and surveys that will show how many relationship and families were affected by this, but right now it is too early to tell.

potential FTC action

With Ashley Madison defrauding it’s clients with fake female accounts and poor cyber security practices will the FTC have a field day with their sorry asses?

Since the courts have just given the FTC that authority, I am expecting tremendous scrutiny and fines.

issues I have forgotten or did not think of

some of the data is showing 20 million guys checked their Ashley Madison email, but only 1492 women did… those are some really slim odds of getting tail. that tail also has to be really tired and like tossing that hot dog down a hallway. With the site creating a ton of bogus accounts to give the semblance of women to meet, it seems like plain fraud and dirty pool. Remember that I see quite a bit of spam for other sites and the names and locations change for the women’s images. We know that there have been cases where pictures of women have been harvested from the web/facebook and used by these types of sites.

As a man, I have a pretty strong belief that any near average or better woman that would like to spend some time between the sheets (or on/in a car, stairwell, rooftop, back yard, wherever) with a man, all they need to do is let it be known and they could even take auditions if they wanted.